U.S. Govt. Spent $1M To Dump Dead Bird Carcasses in Gulf

Well, there's $1 million we won't be seeing in improved U.S. infrastructure.

Gulf state residents and fishermen are finding dead bird carcasses attached to government issued buoys floating in and around the area.

According to a report out of Alabama, the rotting carcasses are being used in a government study to collect data about on how many birds might have died during the BP oil disaster in the spring of 2010.

The U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife is conducting the one million dollar study, appropriately named, the Carcass Drift Study. They have already released 248 dead birds into the Gulf, each equipped with a radio-transmitting buoy used to collect data on birds who might have come in contact with leaked oil and what the statistical chances are of them drifting ashore. Scientists feel most of these injured or sickened birds would be eaten by predators like sharks, or sink to the bottom of the ocean. Also released during the study were 66 dummy carcasses, also equipped with the buoys, which must have been confusing to sharks and other birds.

A similar study was conducted after the Alaskan Valdez environmental disaster in 1989.

Alabama resident R.L. Constantine, who lives near Mullet Point, discovered one of the carcasses on the beach in front of his home and the results were pretty unappetizing.

“The bird just fell apart when I picked up the buoy. There was a steel
wire connected to its leg, and the bird just fell off. It was in pretty
bad shape,” Constantine said. “I called the number on the buoy to report
it but I never heard back from anyone.”

And there's your government dollars hard at work. Who needs a S&P AAA rating when we can all dine on the rotting carcass of overpaid, brain-dead, government employees?

Final cost analysis:

U.S. government study to find out how many birds BP killed = $1 Million

I have written and covered celebrity, entertainment and popular culture for over ten years. I also created celebrity web-site Glosslip.com as part of the Blogcritics.org network. When both sites were purchased in 2008 by Technorati.com, she joined their editorial team as Entertainment Editor and then…